With the development of the digital television technology, Set Top Boxes (STBs) are prevalent in the everyday life of people, and it is convenient for people to watch digital television programs. Getting home after working for a day, people are accustomed to turning on the television to find favorite programs. Currently, the Electronic Program Guide (EPG) provided by the STB and the integrated digital television provides information about all programs available to the audience, and is an essential technique that constitutes an interactive television. By using the EPG, the audience can find favorite programs conveniently. The EPG includes basic functions such as providing additional information about programs, categorizing programs, reserving programs, and controlling programs by parents according to levels.
In the prior art, when a user selects a favorite program, the program delivered by the server system on the cable television network includes the name and play time of the program. After the program is delivered, the STB retrieves the information about the program played by the network server, and displays the information to the user through the EPG. The user sets the favorite program or the program to be renewed according to the information about the current program. Afterward, the user invokes the set program manually.
In the prior art, when the user renews a program that is not played currently, each operation renews only one episode. Therefore, multiple operations are required if a TV series is composed of several episodes. As shown in FIG. 1, the program renewal procedure in the prior art is as follows:
(1) The user renews a program on a channel.
(2) The STB stores the channel information, program name, and program time of the program into a non-volatile memory of the STB.
(3) When the local time of the STB is equal to or a few seconds earlier than the play time of the renewed program, a dialogue box appears on the TV screen, asking whether the user wants to access the renewed program.
(4) If the user chooses to access the program, the user accesses the corresponding channel to watch the program according to the frequency and channel information.
(5) If the user refuses to access the program, the user closes the dialogue box, and the existing service is not interrupted (for example, the current program goes on).
The mode of renewing a program in the prior art involves at least the following problems:
The EPG includes information about multiple channels and multiple programs, and it is troublesome for the user to search for an episode of a TV series manually. For example, if the user wants to renew a TV series, the user needs to search for each episode of the TV series and renew the episode separately. Therefore, the user operations are complicated. In addition, the user has to keep looking up the EPG for the program to be renewed, and tends to miss many programs which are more wonderful than the currently played program. When multiple channels are playing the same TV series, the user generally does not know the information about the same TV series played on multiple channels.